Identify the competent authority and complain.
Provide a copy of the records you have taken.
Identify the specific issues leading you to believe there are quality issues.
Explain why you believe these are going to cause unfairness. For instance, if you
believe that the client was not able to put their version of events, or did not fully
understand the questions put to him, say so.
The outcome of such a complaint could be important evidence. If, for instance, the only avenue is to
complain to the interpreting service, but they agree that there has been an issue and ensure a
different interpreter attends subsequently, this will go a long way to showing that the interpreting
was substandard when you come to address a court on how to work with the evidence.
3. Making arguments before the courts
a. The court’s own duty to ensure adequate interpretation
As we saw in the overview of the Directive, the right to adequate interpretation applies equally at
court. It is abundantly clear that the court must ensure that the interpretation in its own
proceedings is of a quality sufficient to safeguard the fairness of the proceedings. All of the
suggestions made above in relation to the police station apply equally: be watchful of the standard
of interpretation and seek replacement of the interpreter where possible.
b. The court’s duty in respect of inadequate police station interpreta tion:
‘Exercising control’ when ‘put on notice’
The more important question here is what the courts, including the trial court, must do in relation to
issues surrounding the inadequacy of the interpretation during the pre-trial stage. The Directive
does not explicitly address this. The right laid down in the Directive is a right to ‘adequate’
interpretation and its purpose, as we have seen, is to ‘safeguard the fairness of proceedings’.
Logically, if inadequate interpretation is provided at the police station, but the resulting record is
nevertheless used to convict the person, and it causes unfairness, the objective is not met. It follows
that if a violation occurs, the court must provide a remedy (see the ‘Using EU Law in Practice’
Toolkit). National courts may already be under a duty, under national law, to have regard to issues
with interpreting during questioning when assessing the evidence, or considering nullity requests.
However, there is arguably a remedial principle inherent to the Directive. As mentioned above, the
Directive aims to facilitate the application of right to language assistance arising in the ECtHR caselaw, and is to be implemented and applied consistently with the latter. The case-law points to an
approach whereby courts must ‘exercise control’ when ‘put on notice’ as to an interpretation issue.
iii.
The embryonic ‘retroactive control’ principle in Diallo v. Sweden
Diallo v. Sweden, as we saw earlier, was the case which established the right to an interpreter at the
police station. The customs authorities of Sweden arrested a French national, who did not speak
Swedish, for importing heroin. An interview was initially conducted without an interpreter, with the
customs officer (‘AS’) conducting the discussion in French. The suspect stated that packages of which
she was in possession contained a substance for washing money. A subsequent interview was
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